CH 5.1: I believe I can soar

If I were limited to just a single word to describe myself, I would find myself in a bind. I’d find it to be a difficult decision between a few choice words, such as hideous. Or ugly. Maybe even monstrous. And hideously gross. But If I had to choose just a single word? I would have to pick nasty.

Looking into the mirror in the Queen’s Hall, I experienced a dissonance. I saw myself as I once was, in a fading image overlapping what the mirror alleged that I looked like. Before I was dragged through a portal, I had been ok looking. Maybe not great, but good enough, that with a little confidence, I was able to do alright.

But according to this reflection...My hair was gone, replaced by two tiny antennae that hung over my eyebrows like little stubs. I reached up, expecting to feel hair, but finding a smooth scalp, and the antennae...They were fuzzy, and when I touched them it felt like that one time I got tazed. I jerked my hands down away from them. Not for touching, I thought to myself. My hands found my eyes next, actually brushing my eyeballs on the way down. My eyeballs stuck out way further than they should, and they were hard, and faceted. They also didn’t feel anything when I touched them. In the mirror, they glowed yellow. Ok, glowing yellow eyes wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me. No, the worst was yet to come, as my hands found my lips. Or what used to be my lips. Where they should be. But weren’t. I felt chitin, like overly long fingernails, and the sides of my mouth had two spiny protrusions, almost a mix between mandibles and tusks.

My nose was gone, replaced by slits.

My skin was hard in spots, at least where I could see it.

My teeth weren’t pearly white, but were jagged and veined black and red.

How the fuck had I not noticed this earlier? I was atrocious. Absolutely disgusting. The mirror had to be lying. It had to be.

“No,” I said softly, continuing to probe myself. My chest was hard and flat. My curves gone. And my lips. Oh god my lips…“Take it back,” I whispered. “Please, take it back. Let me be human…” I trailed off. I would have wept, had I the glands for it.

Sympathy was on the Queen’s face. “To accept is difficult. But--you must. For our Kin, if for nothing else.”

“Kin?” I asked, barely processing the words, meanwhile thinking over and over again: Who would touch me? Who would let me touch them. I was a monster.

The Queen continued, oblivious to my cyclical internal monologue. “Yes,” She said. “The Court has charged you with a mission of utmost importance.”

What was the word I was thinking of? Were I not numb, I might have called bullshit. And looking back on this moment, I truly ought to have. If choosing the Fey and Fairy Court was so rare, then how could the Queen have created a plan dependent upon the newest, weakest member, whom the Queen had no idea would even agree? But like I said, I wasn’t thinking straight.

“But how,” I said softly. “Look at me. Look.” I gestured upwards and downwards at my foulness. “I can’t be an insect lady...I can’t. Please, let me unchoose this...Fairies should be hot as fuck, not fucking hideous.”

Waz winced again. I had no thought on how hurtful my words could be for an insectoid. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t honestly say that he would have chosen to look that way. Or maybe he did? Did Waz go through the same Character Selection as I did? Or was he born that way? Either way, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t about to spend an eternity looking like a bug girl.

“Daughter,” the Queen said sternly. “You have a powerful Affinity, as do all our kind, and yours is for a variant of Transform, is this not?”

I thought I remembered something along those lines. But before I could either agree or disagree, the Queen kept going, offering a string, a glimmer, of hope.

“Then just as I appear before you now, so you can appear before others...I could even teach this technique to you, should you complete this service suitably”

I could look like her? Even then, I don’t know if I’d want to keep the antennae or wings, but everything else about the Queen was nice. A far cry better than how I looked now, that was for sure.

“How?” I asked. “Please teach me, I beg.” I fell to my knees, ignoring the soft floor, or any smudge it might get on the fabric of my dress. I didn’t care about that. I needed this ‘technique’ that she had described.

The Queen nodded. “And so I shall...After.”

“Just tell me what you need me to do,” I said. I would kill someone. Maybe not a kid, and probably not a baby, but I would totally kill someone if it was required. Preferably a male.

“To begin,” the Queen said, “You shall refer to me as Her Royal Majesty. Alternatively, I shall accept Court Mother, or finally, in an informal setting, Mom.”

I gagged.

“That behavior is unbecoming of my Daughter,” the Queen said. “Stop that at once.”

I kept gagging. Gross. Just thinking about calling some lady I didn’t know mom, or mother, or anything like that. Fuck that lady.

“Why do you do that? Are you ill?” The Queen asked me, before turning to Waz. “Is she ill?”

Waz shook his head. “Your Royal Majesty, I believe that Her Highness is overly tired from this day and Rebirth. Perhaps I shall take her to her chamber, and commence preparations for the task?”

The Queen nodded, “Yes, you do that Waz…” She continued frowning at me. “Recover well, Daughter…”